


Coming Home Again

by Naeshira



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Childhood Memories, Gen, Nostalgia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-12
Updated: 2015-07-12
Packaged: 2018-04-08 22:44:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4323645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Naeshira/pseuds/Naeshira
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chowder learned to skate at Faber while his parents were at Samwell. He finds his old house and takes a selfie with it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Coming Home Again

"I found it!" Chris gasps breathlessly, face flushed with excitement. 

"Found what?" Dex asks. They're in the library, and he and Nursey had been working on homework and flipping between ignoring and annoying each other. 

"My house! My old house!" Chris is shoving their books and papers at them, urging them to come with him. They do, because it's hard not to when he's this excited.

~

Twenty minutes later, Chris stops walking in the middle of a quiet, suburban Samwell street. He reaches in a pocket and pulls out a picture, and his friends both lean over his shoulders to look. It's wrinkled and lined where it's been folded, but it's clearly the small house across the street from them. The bushes in the picture are gone now, and a little tree is struggling up in the front corner of the yard, but it's unmistakably the same house. 

Chris's parents are in the picture, posing on the concrete front step. They're wearing matching windbreakers and Mrs. Chow is wearing a fanny pack and holding a pudgy baby Chris in her arms. Mr. Chow has a pair of large sunglasses perched on the top of his head and is proudly holding up the key to the house.

"They even kept the house the same color." Nursey comments.

Chris nods, quiet. He was young when they lived here, but not too young to remember. 

~

He remembers the pattern of the kitchen tile, where he'd sit with his animal toys and play zookeeper. He remembers the hum of his parents speaking over his head in a mix of English and Mandarin, his father working on a paper at the table and his mother cooking dinner. 

He remembers Samwell, distantly. More, he remembers being pulled gently across Faber's ice on his very first pair of skates. His gloves had little sharks on them. He learned to skate here, at Samwell, and the thought makes him smile, shifting to look at his friends. 

Dex and Nursey are still there, one on either side of him, their shoulders just close enough to nudge. A mail truck is making its way up the the street, and a dog is barking at it. 

"How old were you?" Nursey asks after a moment. "When you moved to San Francisco?" 

Chris shrugs. "Five or six, maybe? I started first grade in Cali." 

~

He remembers those two months when his father had flown to California to find a house. Those two months when it was just him and his mother and his baby sister. All his toys had been boxed away and the hallway was suddenly filled with more boxes that were being filled and taped and labeled. 

It had taken the longest week of Chris's life to drive across the country, their whole lives wrapped up in the U-Haul behind them. 

He never noticed when he'd picked up that Californian accent. But at least he'd never learned to sound like an east coaster. 

Dex leans over, his own accent more prominent now that Chris is thinking about it. "You think they know we're standing out here?" 

"No car in the driveway," Nursey points out. "They might not be home." 

"Yeah, but someone could be, and I don't want them to think we're being creepy." Dex says.

The mail truck is now at the house. Chris waves at the mail lady like he does back home. She waves back. "I've been up and down this neighborhood for at least a week." He says, refolding the picture and putting it back in his pocket. "They know I'm being creepy by now."

Dex doesn't look comforted by this information, but Nursey laughs. "You wanna just go all the way and take a picture?" 

"Yeah!" Chris pulls out his phone and turns around, angling for the best house selfie. He takes a couple as the mail truck pulls away, and then motions the other two to his side. Nursey has the longest arms, so he takes the camera, leaving Chris able to throw an arm around them both. 

The house is kind of blocked from sight now, but the roof is visible, and the little tree, and the garage. This is the picture Chris prints out to pin to his bulletin board. He sends all the pictures to his parents, in an email titled, ~I found it!!!~

**Author's Note:**

> There we go! We know from Bitty's Twitter that Chowder learned to skate at Samwell (he says so during his lunch with Farmer and Bitty that Jack crashed) so I wanted to develop that a bit and have him to find his old house.
> 
> I think it'd be cool to find the house we used to live in. Kind of pulled a bit of my experience into this story, when I was five or six we moved across a few state lines to where we live now. So there's that.
> 
> Hope you guys enjoyed it!


End file.
